Me? I quote Alfredo from La traviata:
Io tremo! Oh ciel! Coraggio!
Remember those commercials? Maybe they are still out there; I rarely watch TV commercials these days, thanks to DVR.
Anyway, Madonna believes it, that’s for sure!
Madonna believes that it will be well “worth it” for fans to pay $300 a pop to see her next tour.
As the Material Girl told Newsweek about her plans to tour in support of her upcoming album, “M.D.N.A,” the star seemed highly dismissive of fan complaints about high ticket prices.
“Start saving your pennies now,” said Madonna. “People spend $300 on crazy things all the time, things like handbags. So work all year, scrape the money together, and come to my show. I’m worth it.”
Probably no other country (at least not yet) can boast as many great symphony orchestras, opera companies and conservatories. We are training and producing a stunningly high level of young musicians. The paradox: every arts institution I know is struggling to keep and develop its audience. The arts might need to be repackaged, but without compromising the quality and essence of the inherited art form of which we are the custodians.
-James Conlon
The idea of a wet T-shirted quartet where once was Amadeus has me reaching for the sea-sick pills, or just retching.
-Sir Thomas Allen
You practice and you get better. It’s very simple.
-Philip Glass
Read more here. (And who knew trees had bulbs?!)
Music is a performing art: even masterpieces need to be performed to live.
-David Bratman
I agree.
I read it here.
It bears repeating: at the Met, the most expensive opera tickets are indeed expensive, but you can stand behind the orchestra section—or even sit at the upper reaches of the house—for less than the cost of an IMAX showing at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 multiplex up the road. This persistent fiction of “elitism,” and contemporary classical music’s supposed inaccessibility, is one of the strongest propagandistic tools ever devised by the titans of corporate pop culture. They would prefer you not ever cost-compare a Family Circle seat to Satyagraha alongisde a 3D screening of Transformers 3.
-Seth Colter Walls
You can read that — and more — here.
If you kill the culture, you kill the country.
-Riccardo Muti
I do not play to them as an artist to the public, but as one human being to another.
—Maud Powell
I’d never heard of the violinist Maud Powell. How about you? You can read about her here and you can visit the Maud Powell Society page.
Attending Harvard instead of a conservatory was the single best thing that ever happened to me. I started meeting people who were at least as passionate about their fields as I may have been about mine. It opened up new worlds,” he continued. “It made me get out of myself and think about music as it related to the world, in a very different way than if I had just concentrated on my scales and exercises. It made me much less neurotic. Performances were no longer the only thing in the world. My whole life didn’t depend on the success or failure of a performance, and I could see that there were other things that I could be if I were not a musician.
-Yo Yo Ma
I continue to encourage anyone who will listen to go first to a university and only later to a conservatory. Get a well rounded education. Understand that there are so many incredible things to learn. It’s not all about sitting in a reed room or at the piano for 6 hours a day!
The quote is from an article by Tim Page about those talented kids (mostly about Jackie Evancho) and is worth a look-see.
I’m gonna guess he’s going to get a lot of harsh words. I once tweeted something (without even mentioning her name) just a bit curious about her talent and boy did I get harsh tweets back. People love their Evancho and there is no telling them anything negative. They will bash you.
From Robert [Downey Jr.] I kept hearing, ‘We’re going to have the Schubert,’ ‘We’re going to have the Mozart.’
I read it in the Anastasia Tsioulcas article here. It’s about a movie where the good guy likes classical music.
How long am I looking at to stop sounding like a tattoo gun being waved around, and start sounding like a musical instrument? Any tips how to make a vaguely respectable sound?
(Yes, the person is talking about oboe!)
Q Is it ever boring sitting there in the percussion section, waiting for your entrance?
A Do you mean, for example, when I have one cymbal crash in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 in the slow movement of this ninety-minute work? The answer is Not at all! Every rehearsal and concert, for me, is a master class and I enjoy listening to the creative genius of these composers, studying the orchestration, and observing the technical skills of my colleagues.-Tony Cirone
Read here.
How can classical music die if it keeps showing up on “The Simpsons”?
-Barry Johnson
There is something very psychological about mass-distributed music consumption. If I buy an LP and listen to it, I think how wonderful the music is, partly because I have paid for it. If I listen to something on spotify, I think how cheap and disposable it is. This is purely psychological I think: the medium makes us de-value the musical composition.
-Jack Curtis Dubowsky
I read this on Facebook and I think he really has a good point. It’s just something to ponder for now ….
(FYI, Jack’s website is here.)
